WASHINGTON, DC – The snowballing troubles of Jesse Jackson Jr. took a new turn Friday with the revelation that federal investigators have launched a probe into “suspicious activity” in the South Shore congessman’s finances.

Focusing on a completely new area of scrutiny for the son of the famed civil rights leader, the investigation is not related to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s attempted sale of a U.S. Senate seat, a scandal that has ensnared Jackson in the past, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Rather, the probe — based in the Washington, D.C., FBI field office —is focusing on “suspicious activity” involving the congressman’s finances related to his House seat and the possibility of inappropriate expenditures, the sources said.

The probe was active in the weeks prior to Jackson taking a leave from his U.S. House seat on June 10, a leave his office ultimately attributed to his need for treatment for bipolar disorder, the sources said.

It was unclear whether the investigation involved the congressman’s official House spending account or his campaign finance account. But one source said it was an account monitored by Congress.

All members of the U.S. House receive an allowance to operate offices in Washington and in their districts. The allowances for rank-and-file members ranged from $1.4 million to $2 million in 2010, according to the House website.

Jackson’s congressional spokesman Frank Watkins said he was unaware of any investigation, had no comment and had no immediate way to get a hold of the congressman.

One of Jackson’s attorney’s, Paul Langer, repeatedly said “no comment,” when asked whether Jackson was under investigation related to his finances.

When asked if he was still representing Jackson or if the congressman had retained another attorney, Langer said:

“I can’t even comment on that.”

News of the probe — first disclosed by the Sun-Times — comes as questions increasingly swirl around Jackson’s absence from not only his official duties in Washington, but the campaign trail as the Nov. 6 election nears.

Citing exhaustion, Jackson, 47, stopped working, according to his staff, on June 10. His staff did not make that known until two weeks later.

He went to a clinic in Arizona then to the Mayo Clinic, which released a statement saying he was being treated for a bipolar disorder. Jackson is up for re-election Nov. 6 but has not campaigned since he won the Democratic primary in March.

The Jacksons put their Washington, D.C., home on the market last month at a price of $2.5 million. A campaign spokesman said at the time that the home was put on the market to pay for mounting medical bills. They subsequently took it off the market, saying it was a security issue.

Jackson came under scrutiny after one of his campaign donors approached Blagojevich with a pay-to-play offer regarding the appointment to President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. Jackson has denied any wrongdoing, but that revelation sparked an investigation by a House ethics committee.

Jackson was first elected to Congress in 1995 and boasted of almost never missing a vote until he vanished from public view in June.

That’s when his office announced that he was taking off work to undergo medical treatment for “exhaustion.” Under pressure to reveal more details of his condition from even fellow politicians, Jackson’s office gradually dribbled out more extensive explanations over the course of the summer.

He finally surfaced nearly a month later when Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported he was being treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The clinic revealed Jackson was being treated for Bipolar II depression, “a treatable condition that affects parts of the brain controlling emotion, thought and drive and is most likely caused by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors.”

Jackson returned to his home in Washington, D.C., early last month, but he still has not returned to work. His wife, Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th), recently said he may not return until after the November election, when he is up for another two-year term in the U.S. House.

“I can’t speak to when that’s going to happen or how that’s going to happen,” she said. “I can only say that I will continue to rely on [doctors’] expertise. I would only ask for patience.”

The couple has been loathe to speak to the media.

During a fund-raising event last month, Sandi Jackson called reporters waiting to speak to her outside “jackals.” She went to great lengths to avoid the media that night, waiting inside the darkened, otherwise empty restaurant until the last camera departed before she would exit.

The congressman once was among the more extroverted Chicago politicians, but he has been far more reclusive since his name was first linked to the scandal surrounding Blagojevich almost four years ago.

Jackson friend and campaign contributor Raghuveer Nayak told authorities he approached the then-governor with a lucrative fund-raising offer that could have led to Blagojevich’s appointment of Jackson to Obama’s old Senate seat.

Jackson has denied that version of events, and he was never charged with wrongdoing.

LONDON, UK – A protest by 10,000 Muslims outside the offices of Google in London today is just the first in an orchestrated attempt to force the company to remove an anti-Islamic film from website YouTube in Britain.

Thousands had travelled from as far afield as Glasgow to take part in the demonstration, ahead of a planned million-strong march in Hyde Park in coming weeks.

Anger over ‘The Innocence of Muslims’, an American-produced film which insults the Prophet Mohammad and demeans Muslims, according to protesters, remains available to watch on the website YouTube, a subsidiary of Google.

Organiser Masoud Alam said: “Our next protest will be at the offices of Google and YouTube across the world. We are looking to ban this film.

“This is not freedom of expression, there is a limit for that. This insult of the Prophet will not be allowed.

The group’s next action was a march Mr Alam hoped would be “a million strong” would take place in Hyde Park “in the next few weeks”, he said.

“Until it is banned we will keep protesting,” he added.

Today’s demonstration was the third organised in a month, and took place on the central London street where the website search giant has its UK headquarters. A demonstration outside the American Embassy in London last month drew little attention as protests in Libya, Tunisia and Yemen dominated headlines, including the storming of embassy in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the death of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

Barricades were erected in front of Google’s headquarters and a crowd bearing placards with the words “We love our prophet more than our lives” and “Prophet Muhammad is the founder of freedom of speech” had amassed by lunchtime.

Speeches by more than a dozen imams in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, and English urged Muslims to honour the name of the Prophet and not to back down in the face of Google’s continuing reluctance to act, and were met with passionate cries of “God is Great” and “Mohammad is the Prophet of God” in Arabic.

One of the speakers, Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui, told The Daily Telegraph: “Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.

“Organisations like Google are key players and have to take responsibility for civility. You can’t just say it doesn’t matter that it’s freedom of speech. It’s anarchy.”

Sheikh Siddiqui, a barrister from Nuneaton, said he wanted to form a coalition with the Church of England, Catholics, Jewish groups, Trade Unions and even Conservatives to encourage their ranks to join his “campaign for civility”.

“We want everyone in society to recognise these people are wrecking our fragile global society. We want the Church, the Synod, Jewish groups and establishment figures involved,” he said.

As many as 800 imams in mosques across Britain helped to organise today’s protest, which lasted four hours and blocked roads almost up to the Queen’s doorstep on Buckingham Palace Road.

Muslims from Blackburn, Birmingham, Glasgow, Luton, Manchester and Peterborough were in attendance. When asked where where the women attending the protest were, one protester replied: “Right at the back”.

Self-employed businessman Ahmed Nasar said he was worried the video could lead to violence in Britain in the same way as it had abroad. “If you push people too far,” he said, “You will turn the peaceful elements into violence.”

A YouTube spokesperson said: “We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions.

“This can be a challenge because what’s OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video – which is widely available on the Web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube.”

WASHINGTON, DC – Will the most divisive campaign in modern American history culminate in massive riots in our major cities? Right now, supporters of Barack Obama and supporters of Mitt Romney are both pinning all of their hopes on a victory on November 6th. The race for the presidency is extremely tight, and obviously the side that loses is going to be extremely disappointed when the election results are finalized. But could this actually lead to violence? Could we actually see rioting in communities all over America? Well, the conditions are certainly ripe for it.

WASHINGTON, DC – The 2012 election season couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. Postal Service.

While still low on cash, the postal service has enough to avoid insolvency this month, thanks in large part to the mountains of political junk mail and the influx of Super PACs paying top postage rates.

Federal candidates, political parties and special interest groups are mailing out more fliers and postcards via the postal service in 2012 than in previous election cycles. Spending topped $28.9 million through the end of August, compared to $27.9 million for the entire election cycle in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The postal service is on track to surpass an original estimate of $285 million, which includes the haul from local races nationwide, said Cliff Rucker, vice president of USPS sales.

It’s still not enough to save the postal service. But it’s enough to get the agency past an October cash crunch that the postal service had warned about.

“Our liquidity situation remains serious,” USPS spokesman David Partenheimer said. “We do expect election mail and the current holiday mailing season to help us get through this month’s low point in our cash flow.”

Related: Postal Service increasing prices

The USPS has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. A key reason was a 2006 law that required the postal service to make annual payments of about $5.5 billion for 10 years to pay for future retiree health benefits.

The other big issue has been the dramatic drop in regular mail that most consumers use because the rise of technology has enabled electronic bill pay and instant communications like email, skype and texting.

In the three months that ended June 30, the agency reported net losses of $5.2 billion.

Congress has been grappling with different bills to save the postal service, but no consensus has emerged. None are expected before next year. By spring, the postal service could again face the threat of insolvency.

The election season has been a bright spot. Political consultants, who send direct mail, are predicting the 2012 political season to be the best yet for the postal service.

“It’s a presidential year, there’s more money in the system, there’s certainly more direct mail … than there was two years ago,” said Chris Cooper, managing director at SKD Knickerbocker, a political consulting firm that works with Democrats.

Roughly 15% of campaign spending goes toward political junk mail, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. If $2.5 billion is spent on the 2012 elections, as the the Center for Responsive Politics has estimated, it could push the tally as high as $375 million.

The postal service is more conservative. Spokeswoman Patricia Licata says the USPS is hoping to meet or top its political haul from 2010, which was about $338 million.

One major reason for the large haul is the influx of Super PACs, the independent groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash on campaigns. Many Super PACs are funded with cash from large corporations and small groups of wealthy individuals.

The Super PACs are also spending more because they don’t qualify for postal service discounts of about 8 cents to 12 cents apiece reserved for candidates and political parties. Those can add up.

Political groups also prefer direct mail, because they can “micro-target” certain geographic areas for specific, often negative, messages about opposing candidates.

“Much of the political mail is coming from the Super PACs, because you can send nastier messages about candidates with direct mail than you can in a television ad,” said Alan Robinson, a postal policy consultant with Direct Communications Group.

So far, Democrats are outspending Republicans using the postal service — $17.8 million vs $10.2 million — according to an analysis of campaign expenditures by the Center for Responsive Politics.

ISRAEL – Just what might happen if the Iranians got their hands on a nuclear weapon? Would they fire it at an Israeli city, causing tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties? Or would they use it as a geopolitical weapon, seeking to dominate the Middle East and forcing the hand of Western powers, either subtly or by overtly threatening death and destruction to those who fail to heed their dictates?

While political scientists and world leaders have debated the likelihood of those two possibilities, there is a third plausible scenario: The use of a nuclear weapon by Iran to carry out an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against Israel, the US, or Europe. Such an attack could cause severe damage to the electrical grid in the targeted nations, to the extent that the routines of daily life — centered around the use of electrical power — could be halted, for a short or even long period of time.Read the rest of this entry »

DALLAS, TEXAS – A North Texas woman has been charged with retaliation for allegedly posting an undercover police officer’s photo on Facebook and identifying him by his job.

Mesquite police arrested Melissa Walthall, 30, for allegedly posting the photo of the officer, who authorities say recently testified in a drug case against her friend. Her Facebook post identified the person as an undercover officer, according to a federal affidavit.

After a caller tipped off Mesquite police to Walthall’s Facebook post about a week ago, an investigator found that it posed a “viable threat to that officer’s safety,” the affidavit said.

The Dallas Morning News reports (http://dallasne.ws/X3x5IS ) that her friend, George Pickens, 34, was upset about the officer’s testimony and found his photograph on Facebook while researching him online.

Pickens’ brother, Bobby Stedham, used the photo to make fliers, and the two men planned to display them like garage sale signs, according to the affidavit. Police reported finding them while searching Pickens’ Dallas-area house.

Stedham, 26, has been charged with retaliation, and Pickens faces federal drug and weapons charges, based on items police reported finding during the search of his house.

Mitch Landry, deputy executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association in Austin, said his organization has discussed with its members the perils of social media — particularly for those involved in undercover work.

“Our best advice is — if you don’t want that information out there, don’t have those accounts,” Landry told the newspaper. “There’s no way to be truly anonymous if you have a Facebook page.”

Many police departments have not yet developed social media policies and guidelines for their officers. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, for example, has an electronic etiquette policy that prohibits such things as vulgar language or sending obscene messages. It does not address the use of social media.

Lt. Bill Hedgpeth, Mesquite police’s spokesman, said his department does not have a set policy but periodically reminds officers to check their social media privacy settings so they allow only friends to view personal information on Facebook.

“The Internet can be a dangerous place,” said Hedgpeth, who added that he got rid of his Facebook account.

Preliminary figures show the annual benefit boost will be between 1 percent and 2 percent, which would be among the lowest since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

Monthly benefits for retired workers now average $1,237, meaning the typical retiree can expect a raise of between $12 and $24 a month.

The size of the increase will be made official Tuesday, when the government releases inflation figures for September. The announcement is unlikely to please a big block of voters — 56 million people get benefits — just three weeks before elections for president and Congress.

The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is tied to a government measure of inflation adopted by Congress in the 1970s. It shows that consumer prices have gone up by less than 2 percent in the past year.

“Basically, for the past 12 months, prices did not go up as rapidly as they did the year before,” said Polina Vlasenko, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, based in Great Barrington, Mass.Read the rest of this entry »